Why does he shoot at June first? If Nevill is in bed (your claim), then Jeremy has all the time in the world. Why not just stand over the bed and shoot Nevill at close range, then June?
if Jeremy is staging this as Sheila run amok, he can shoot June as many times as he likes once he has killed Nevill.
Nevill is at the other side of the bed. How does Nevill manage to get out of the bedroom and past Jeremy? Why doesn't Jeremy just shoot him?
Why doesn't Nevill tackle Jeremy instead?
You're still saying Nevill was shot in bed. How come he leaves no blood on the bedclothes?
How does Nevill know Jeremy will even follow him downstairs? He is leaving the twins in danger and Sheila. I don't say that is impossible, but is it likely?
It wasn't a king size bed in a Las Vegas penthouse. It was just an ordinary brass double bed. He could have stood over the bed and shot Nevill easily, then shot June. Same as what he did with the twins in one of the fusillades, according to you.
Just seems a bit strange that he would focus so much on June and allow Nevill to get up. Maybe Nevill was snoring and June was awake and propped up in bed reading her Bible?
Jeremy lets him run away, but the prosecution say Jeremy is shooting him. What were the injuries to Nevill before he left the bedroom?
So we have Nevill, a 61 year old man in bed, just woke, shot twice in the face. Where else was he shot while in the bedroom?
I don't find the prosecution scenario very plausible, for all sorts of reasons. Not impossible, if perhaps modified a little, just not as likely as other possibilities.
I appreciate it is a semi-automatic rifle, but I don't find it very likely that Jeremy would shoot June first in such a haphazard manner. Again, I appreciate he needs to stage this as Sheila running amok, but he could just stand over or near the bed and shoot Nevill, then June, or June then Nevill - either works, as long as he quickly kills or incapacitates them. He can then fire into them more once they're incapacitated. There is no way Nevill would get up under those circumstances, or if he does, he isn't going far (as demonstrated by June). Jeremy would then say that Sheila had done exactly that: simply walked up to the bed and killed them. Why not? Why take the risk of allowing people to move around the house?
I think if what the prosecution say had happened and June had been shot multiple times first instead of Nevill, there would still be blood on Nevill's side of the bed because Jeremy would immediately notice him stirring, and I think given the layout of the bedroom, Nevill would have had difficulty escaping from Jeremy. The exit to the main landing was on the other side of the bed and Jeremy was in the way. The only other exit was to the box room, which would have required Nevill to turn his back to Jeremy.
I accept that Jeremy does not want to be marked, but I think Jeremy would have stopped him either by firing some more or with the butt of the rifle. Besides, according to the prosecution's own scenario, Jeremy struggles with him anyway when they're in the kitchen.
The long and short of it is that Jeremy, if he is the killer, needs to contain his parents in that room. If Jeremy is the killer, then Nevill's escape (or Nevill already downstairs) represented the plan going awry and I think he then decided to make up the phone call. My view is that if Jeremy did it, then Nevill was already downstairs.
Which is it? Nevill was woken up by being shot, or was he woke up immediately prior to being shot, thus he was shot at least twice in bed?
If Nevill leaves that bedroom, he could go anywhere in the house and barricade himself in a room, then open a window and either attempt an escape or shout towards the cottages that were only 100 yards or so away. If he makes it downstairs ahead of Jeremy, he could simply run through the kitchen and it's then only five yards or so to his private den or to the back staircase that leads back up to the upper floor office.
If the prosecution are saying Jeremy caught up with him, then why does Jeremy wait until the kitchen to do that?
What is the evidence that tells the prosecution that Nevill was shot twice in the face while still in the main bedroom, even in bed?
It can't have been when out of bed, can it. He must have been in the bed, or the prosecution theory doesn't hang together.
I do not believe that this evidence establishes Nevill was in the main bedroom that night at all.
The rifle with silencer attached would be something like 1150mm in length (no doubt somebody can double-check and find the precise length). Nevill is on the other side of the bed. That means, if we accept that these were contact shots, Jeremy has to lean over the bed. Did Jeremy ask Nevill to stand still while he shot him?
Just because he is found in pyjamas, it does not follow that he started out in the bedroom. Yes, looked at in isolation, it suggests he was in the bedroom - just common sense - but it doesn't necessarily quite work that way in reality because Nevill did work outside until very late and may have changed downstairs at June's insistence or whatever, and may have had a drink or two and simply had a habit of falling asleep downstairs. Why not?
We do have the four cartridge cases recorded as found in the main bedroom, but we can't rely on that.
The most compelling evidence is that there is no blood on Nevill's side of the bed. I see that you have changed your scenario to accommodate this and you are now saying that he was not shot in bed. But if he was not shot in bed, then your scenario doesn't work pathologically because you say he was shot at close range, yet I assume he was running like 'lightning' (according to Munksa).
It's not hanging together.
Some of the wounds track downwards, according to the pathologist. In his report, Dr. Vanezis enumerates the wounds, so could you look yourself now and tell us which of the wounds were those that Nevill sustained in the main bedroom and in what order?
Also, how does the prosecution scenario fit with the conclusion of Dr. Vanezis that the head/neck wounds were inflicted "after [Nevill] had ceased to struggle"?
Let's say that a resolution of this problem depends on Nevill bolting from the room.
The prosecution say that Jeremy shot June in the head while she was still in bed. That means Jeremy needed to be stood at the foot of the bed, facing Nevill and June, and he would have been blocking Nevill's exit from the bedroom.
This also means that Jeremy must have shot June first, allowing Nevill to wake and escape, even though he had ample time to simply kill Nevill while he slept. Jeremy was using a semi-automatic rifle and just needed to point the muzzle end at Nevill. Nothing could be simpler.
Nevill has managed to get out of bed and past Jeremy, leaving no blood, despite being shot several times.
If the transfer blood mark on the wall of the landing at the door of Sheila's bedroom is from Nevill, that means Nevill has run on the opposite direction of the stairs, then stopped and run to the stairs. He has then only left one further transfer blood mark anywhere: on the wall of the first stair landing. All this time, Jeremy has not fired on him or caught up with him.
If June was shot five times in bed, she's staying in bed - in my layman's opinion. Especially if she is shot in the head.
In view of the layout of the main bedroom, if Nevill is shot in or as he is getting out of bed, he will leave blood on the bed clothes and will either tackle Jeremy there and then, or Jeremy will block him, or both. Jeremy is in his way. And if Jeremy shoots him in the upper head region at this stage, you can multiple the probabilities that he is not making it out of that bedroom.
I don't find the prosecution scenario very plausible (which is not to say it isn't happen - I accept it is possible).
I don't accept that the prosecution scenario is based on the evidence. Important aspects of Dr. Vanezis' evidence contradict what you are saying, whereas my own Jeremy scenario is consistent with the pathological evidence. There is no blood on Nevill's side of the bed and no blood of Nevill's in the bedroom. Jeremy would have been in Nevill's way. The position of the cartridge cases cannot be relied on. It's a virtual certainty that June's body has been moved by somebody prior to photography, probably the police.
Of course, no scenario will be perfect and even the prosecution at trial could not be sure of a scenario, and Jeremy's convictions are not based on a specific scenario.
Note, for information: blood typed to Nevill was found on the wall of the middle landing of the main stairs, and on the wall next to the door to Sheila's bedroom. These blood results were indicative, so it is possible that the blood could be attributable to June, if justified on circumstantial grounds. I will put it like this: in either a Jeremy or Sheila scenario, these blood marks are likely to be Nevill's, with a smaller possibility that one or both were June's. In a Jeremy scenario, Nevill and/or June left the marks; in a Sheila scenario, it is possible these are transfer blood marks from Sheila herself, but could be directly from Nevill and/or June.
I dealt with the idea of Nevill exiting through the box room in my scenario. Nevill would not do this due to the layout of the main bedroom. The box room is southerly to the main bedroom and therefore behind the bed. This means Nevill would have his back to Jeremy as he exited by that route, which - in my opinion - means he would not have chosen that route, due to the vulnerability it would present for him, which he would sense intuitively; had he done, Jeremy could have easily shot him in the back. Also, I am of the view that if Nevill escapes from that bedroom, Jeremy is in big, big trouble. It's obvious that Jeremy can't have planned it that way (which axiomatically means that a phone call from Nevill was an improvised element, not part of the plan). If Nevill escapes into the twins room, then he will not leave the twins. He will stand and fight, maybe also barricade the room. He will do whatever it takes. As you say, he will also leave blood in there.
The prosecution have a point when they talks about Nevill rushing out of the room. Nevill could have done this and, to emphasise, it is not my position that Adam's scenario is impossible. I only say it is not very plausible, for a number of reasons already mentioned - opportunity to kill Nevill, absence of blood, bullet trajectories, Jeremy simply in the way, various other circumstantial factors, psychological-motivational factors.
After 37 years, the prosecution have still not produced a scenario that matches the evidence, but I believe the main point is that if such a scenario were put in front of a jury to consider, there would have to be doubt about it. The 1986 jury clearly did not give much thought to the matter.
The evidence is open to interpretation.
I accept it is possible that June was shot in bed several times, including in the head, and then managed to get out of bed and crawl around. No-one can dismiss this out-of-hand. It is possible. But I believe it is not very plausible and so I wish to consider other scenarios.
In short, I do not accept that Nevill or June were shot in bed, and in Nevill's case, I doubt he was in the main bedroom at all. I also believe June's body was moved by the police prior to forensic photography.
I don't believe we can entirely rely on the position of the casings and bullets, but if we are going to do so, then how do they demonstrate that Nevill was shot in the main bedroom? It's being assumed that if there are four casings left, then four wounds must have been inflicted to Nevill in that same room, but the casings seem to be in the wrong place to account for that. I appreciate that they will bounce off walls and so forth (one reason we can't rely on the position recorded), but if Nevill is shot in the main bedroom, there should be more casings on the bed itself and near Sheila's body, not in the area near June's side of the bed. I suppose there is a possibility that Jeremy fired shots to Nevill while facing the exit to the main landing, and the cartridge cases then bounced off the northside wall of the main bedroom and ended up near where June's body would come to a rest.
I think either the casings have been moved within the main bedroom, or a combination of circumstances has occurred in which maybe one or two bullets were never recovered in the main bedroom and Nevill was shot on the main stairs and one or two casings have somehow ended up in the main bedroom, probably because they bounced off the walls and initially ended up on the main landing near the entrance to the main bedroom. In either situation, the movement of the casings was probably accidental/inadvertent.
There should be more cartridge cases on the bed and/or by Sheila's body and/or possibly in the area at the foot of the bed. Would you accept this? Casings and bullets were moved around.
Anyway, if Jeremy is shooting Nevill four times in the main bedroom as Nevill flees, I have some questions:
At what angle are these shots?
In which direction is Jeremy facing for each shot?
Was Sheila walking around of her own accord?
Are we now conceding that the Crown cannot establish that Sheila was sedated and we are relying on her being asleep? Genuine question. I think if we're being honest and following the evidence, we must accept this. That's not to rule out sedation as a theoretical possibility for speculation, it is only to say that the evidence doesn't support the possibility.
That being so, it seems to me the prosecution is in difficulty, but this can be overcome if you can convince me of one or both of the following:
(i). Jeremy used a silencer in the killings. Either the silencer that was found or a different silencer. This is necessary because the three bedrooms are in close proximity and are also directly or almost-directly above the kitchen/laundry area.
(ii). Jeremy was intercepted by Nevill shortly after he entered the farmhouse and the father-son struggle took place before Jeremy fired on any of the others. This would assist because it would allow for Sheila becoming alert and account for her initial movements and reactions, making the time-and-motion scenario more plausible overall.
I think the prosecution will struggle with (i). Even on a good day, the silencer is a poor piece of evidence and the circumstances of its discovery, seizure and examination are more befitting a slapstick comedy production than a serious criminal case. Moreover, the blood findings look inconclusive. Even Arlidge at trial stated that the jury could disregard the silencer, which I think was a very telling slip. Then we have the DNA testing, which the Court of Appeal rejected in 2002 as "meaningless". Use of a silencer also doesn't tie-in very well with the murder scene we can see in front of us. It was chaos. A 'silent' killer, even an amateur, would have to blunder badly to end up in such a melee. It doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
Point (ii) is also a problem because it's not consistent with the blood evidence, which has Nevill bleeding on the stairs and in the jamb of the foyer, suggesting one of two things: either Nevill escaped Jeremy from upstairs, or Nevill was following Jeremy upstairs and Jeremy fired back before returning downstairs with him. Either way, while allowing for inevitable inconsistencies in any real-life scenario, it's difficult to see how Sheila knots into it all. There's also the informed conjecture about June being on the stairs to consider, which Lookout raised the other day in reference to Dr. Vanezis' evidence.
Is there a solution?
If I was acting for the Crown here and I was facing the above as appeal points, I would probably consider obtaining the following evidence:
1. An incident reconstruction demonstrating interior noise levels with and without a silencer. One would hope that the gun is still relatively unobtrusive even without the silencer on, though we shouldn't get our hopes up too high on that. I know a fair bit about guns and I suspect it was quite loud. If I'm right about that, then we've got problems. It is little wonder the relatives were keen on the silencer.
2. Expert pharmacological and psychiatric evidence to demonstrate that, while we cannot establish that Sheila was sedated, her responses and reactions out of sleep would have been impaired due to her psychotropic regimen and possibly on account of other medications.
One possibility I've noticed that guilters sometimes raise is that Nevill was elsewhere at the time Jeremy began the assault - usually it's either downstairs and he interrupts Jeremy on or soon after entry, or he's in the upstairs office. Neither works in my opinion, simply because of how he is dressed when found. An additional problem with having him already downstairs is that you then have to explain the cartridge cases found in a completely different part of the house, which can only work if Jeremy pursues him upstairs, but again, why is he barefoot and in pyjamas? If he is going to confront a potential intruder (as opposed to Sheila having a tantrum) then he'd have footwear at the least. And how does he then end up back downstairs, if Jeremy is pursuing him with a fully-loaded rifle? Remember also that, unlike Sheila, Jeremy would not run ahead of him up the stairs to get at June or the twins, instead Jeremy would deal with him first - surely.
I believe the only likely Jeremy scenario is Nevill in the master bedroom already alert.
Jeremy may have entered the master bedroom from the box room, with Nevill by now on the threshold or the landing. This could be why he shoots June first.
Nevill sees him and takes flight in the opposite direction, down the stairs.
Jeremy shoots from the landing and hits him four times.
This delays Jeremy, which allows Nevill, albeit severely injured, to make it to the kitchen.
By this point, if we assume the twins have already been shot twice and June has been shot three times, this leaves two bullets left.
I don't believe there was a struggle. Jeremy simply shoots Nevill twice more, then clubs him with the butt of the rifle, perhaps knocking him unconscious.
Jeremy reloads, and realising Nevill is still breathing and/or conscious, shoots him twice more in the head.
What if the situation was that Jeremy entered the master bedroom undetected via the box room, while Nevill was on the threshold or main landing alert to a possible intruder? In that scenario, Jeremy might have shot June first before turning fire on Nevill, and it could be considered natural for Nevill to run for the stairs rather than confront Jeremy.
Sheila's bed:
Why in the crime scene photographs does the bed look like it's not been slept in?
It may be that Scott Lomax says otherwise, but that doesn't particularly interest me. I'm referring to what the crime scene photographs show. It does look like the bed either hasn't been slept in or somebody has got out of bed very carefully.
Well it does look that way from the photograph. If she got out of bed, surely that would be obvious from the bedclothes? She wouldn't tidy the bed if she was worried about a disturbance in the house. If Jeremy killed her, why would he be concerned about keeping her bedclothes tidy?
Sheila was a schizophrenic. She was also, according to the prosecution, sedated. I think she had complained to her general practitioners of tiredness and lethargy due to the drugs. It's quite common for schizophrenics to be night owls and to sleep a lot during the day and be up at night until quite a late hour. It's also not uncommon for schizophrenics to go wandering around, aimlessly, especially at night.
Why didn't Jeremy put the silencer next to Sheila?
I can't think of any reason why he would not have done.
A further point is that if we assume he is guilty and he did replace the silencer in the gun cupboard, then why was no blood found on the carpet of the den or in the gun cupboard itself, or even in the cardboard box in which the silencer was found? Both Jeremy and the silencer would have had blood on them.
And why did Jeremy allow the family to take the keys to the house after the police had completed their search? Surely, even if the silencer had been noticed as missing, that in itself is not concrete evidence and he could plead ignorance. (I suppose that raises the more fundamental point of why he would put the silencer back at all).
There is also the prior question of whether a silencer was used in the first place to execute the killings.
Personally, I doubt it would have had much of a mitigating effect acoustically, but I think NG1066 takes a different view, and I also must acknowledge that Jeremy would not necessarily have known about the acoustic effect (even with all his firearms experience) and may have just assumed it would significantly muffle the weapon. He also had no realistic way to test the point beforehand, even if he had planned the whole thing through to that extent. The matter would have to be properly tested. We do have the finding of human blood in the silencer. Assuming it was human blood, and if we are sceptical about the involvement of a silencer, then one must ask: How did the blood get there? The way that the blood dispersed in the silencer (on the outer side of the baffles) would be consistent with the blood having been planted, but how would a conspirator know that the blood being planted is consistent with Sheila's blood type? And would a family member take such a risk? What could motivate them? They weren't threatened with homelessness or some comparable catastrophe. Could the blood have got in there accidentally, either from cross-contamination or something else that occurred prior to the incident?
The DNA testing that was undertaken in the 1990s does not really help because it was inconclusive and not linked to blood.
No blood is visible in the image of the main bedroom on what we assume is Nevill's side of the bed. Adam assumes Nevill was shot in the bedroom, but I am very sceptical.
Is that another duvet on the left hand side on the floor?
Also, the design of the lamp on the right-hand side of the photo. Looks very sinister. What's that all about?
Whose was the pink cuddly toy (looks like an elephant)? (If you look very closely, there may be a brown teddy bear visible next to it too). Did the parents always have that in bed with them? Seems strange to me. Doesn't seem to fit how we think of June.
At a guess, and if I didn't know better, I would say the cuddly toy is the twins' and it's there because sometimes they would want to go in the bed with one or both parents, but were they emotionally- and physically close to June? Seems a bit incongruous, given what we know about her.
Maybe Nevill used it and the twins would sit propped up in the bed next to him while he read them a bedtime story?
Or maybe it's Sheila's and she slept in the bed sometimes when Nevill was sleeping downstairs or in the upstairs office perhaps? But would she sleep in the same bed as June? Again, seems not to fit with what we know. I think there was a strong paternal bond, but Sheila was in her late 20s at this point, so surely that can be ruled out.
It looks like:
- June was shot in bed and then was later shot again;
- Nevill was not shot in the bedroom, probably he was first shot on the stairs by an assailant who was up the stairs or on the top landing and in front of him. He was then followed back down the stairs and killed in the kitchen;
- the twins were shot in two fusillades.
This means if Jeremy is guilty, Nevill must have already been downstairs, perhaps inconspicuously sleeping in the den or lounge, and must have first confronted Jeremy on the mstairs.
This, in turn, means one of the following must have occurred:
(i). Jeremy has started up the main stairs and Nevill has challenged him at that point.
(ii). Jeremy has started his assault upstairs, realised Nevill is not there, and made for the main stairs where he has been caught by Nevill.
In either of those scenarios, Nevill has then been pursued by Jeremy back to the kitchen, where he is killed.
If Sheila is guilty, then Nevill must have made the call to Jeremy with Sheila present. Sheila has then run out of the kitchen in the direction of the main stairs. She has then fired on Nevill while he is ascending the stairs behind her. She has then pursued Nevill back to the kitchen and killed him there.
I didn't say you are wrong. I just asked you to confirm what you are saying.
So he is shot twice in bed, gets out of bed, then is shot twice again, then gets past Jeremy and on to the landing, all in five to 10 seconds.
Admittedly, 10 seconds, when you count it out, is a long time in that type of situation, but I think it must be considered likely for your scenario that he was already awake when Jeremy entered the bedroom. Would you agree? It may be that Jeremy had made enough noise elsewhere in the farmhouse that this had disturbed Nevill's and/or June's sleep.
If Nevill is alerted, would he be out of the main bedroom?
Not necessarily. Remember that, from our perspective, this all happens quite quickly. Nevill may well have been awake and still in bed wondering what the noise was.
However, I appreciate that if Nevill has heard something that is enough to make him wonder, then he may investigate. Yet what evidence is there that tells us he wasn't either just getting out of bed or even standing in the bedroom as Jeremy entered?
We've gone over all this before, of course, in August last year. Another issue is why it appears that Jeremy shoots June first (for some reason, I had come to that conclusion - I can't now remember why)?
Another point is that, actually, if you stop and think about it, the idea of a violent struggle between Jeremy and Nevill makes very little sense. It's another thing that everybody accepts without thinking about whether it's logical.
If Jeremy is armed, then he must shoot Nevill. He isn't going to start getting artsy about it. He wants Nevill dead or incapacitated and he doesn't want Nevill to get to a phone.
Trying to explain how Nevill makes it out of the bedroom, is squaring a circle.
Instead, it's better for the prosecution if Nevill is already on the stairs with Jeremy firing down at him. It fits the ballistics and injuries. But I think I have explained above why I would dismiss the whole background scenario due to the implausibility of Jeremy wanting to wake everybody up and having them run around the house. Nevertheless, regardless of how Nevill gets there, we still have to explain how Nevill makes it to the kitchen without Jeremy stopping him.
Jeremy can just kill him on the stairs or in the corridor, can't he?
Why would Jeremy risk allowing Nevill to barricade himself in the kitchen and go for the phone?
Also, why would Nevill stop at the kitchen? Why not barricade himself in the den and grab a gun? Or even go for the exit, and on finding it locked, leave blooded prints there?
Why not stop by the downstairs shower room and grab one of the guns stored there?
One explanation is that Jeremy must have struggled on those narrow stairs with a long-barrelled rifle, but honestly, given the injuries Nevill had suffered, surely Jeremy would have caught up with him?
The truth is that Jeremy, if he is the killer, messed up. He needed to kill Nevill in bed and somehow and for some unknown reason, that didn't happen, and he was left with a mess, but we are still left with this inexplicable hole in the scenario.
Now let's move into the kitchen and assume both of them are there. We don't know why Jeremy has been so slack and allowed Nevill to get that far, but putting that aside, why does Jeremy need to struggle with Nevill at all? I really don't understand that.
Guilters struggle with this and, clutching at straws, they say that Jeremy ran out of ammunition. OK. Well let's say that happened. We're still left with the hole in the scenario earlier mentioned because Jeremy could still have attacked Nevill before he reached the kitchen, but if we're in the kitchen, why doesn't Nevill make for the back corridor and either exit the farmhouse or retreat to the den? Why isn't there blood on the door between the back corridor and the kitchen?
These problems also slightly apply to a Sheila scenario as well, but they are easier to reconcile with Sheila as the killer, in my view.
Why?
Because a fight between Nevill and Sheila is much more likely in that situation than a fight between Jeremy and Nevill. Jeremy doesn't need to fight Nevill, but Sheila would have to struggle with him. That's one of the reasons a Sheila scenario seems more logical.
The choreography of the shootings is, I believe, a serious problem if Jeremy is the killer. It makes much more sense if Sheila did it.
If Nevill was in bed, then I don't understand how there was a struggle with Jeremy. Surely Jeremy would make sure to kill Nevill, as he was the strongest (arguably stronger than Jeremy)?
If Nevill was not in bed, then how is it that June is shot in bed? Wouldn't she wake up to the noise and investigate?
Some in the guilt camp try to explain this by saying that both parents were in bed and June was shot first, allowing Nevill to spring out of bed and tackle Jeremy. But is this likely? Would Nevill really try to escape rather than protect his wife, the twins and Sheila? Why didn't Jeremy kill Nevill there and then with the rifle? How is it that, if Nevill escapes from the bedroom but is already grievously injured, Jeremy does not manage to catch up with him until they reach the kitchen? Nevill had sustained serious injuries already, including a shot to the face. And where is all the blood on the landing, stairs and in the hallway?
And what is Sheila doing while all the noise and commotion is going on? The prosecution rely on her being in a deep sleep due to the sedative effect of the psychotropics she was on, but there is nothing conclusive to say she was under such an effect.
It could be that, instead, Nevill was downstairs all along and the assault begins with a struggle between him and Jeremy which June and Sheila don't hear, but if that's the case, then how can the distribution of bullet cases be explained? Why is there blood on the threshold between the kitchen and the main hallway? It could be that Nevill was trying to escape, and a shot from Jeremy stopped him and Jeremy dragged him back in the kitchen.
If Jeremy kills Sheila first, then how come there is no evidence of this in Sheila's room? If Sheila moves at any point during the assault, then this discounts the sedation theory and raises a need to explain the lack of physical evidence on Sheila of an assault. Wouldn't she have bruising on her arms, at least, and blood on her feet?
The prosecution claim that Jeremy moved Sheila to the main bedroom, but why would Jeremy do this?
Clearly, Jeremy needs Sheila to be found outside her own room, but wouldn't he move her to the twins' bedroom?
If he planned this, wouldn't Jeremy shoot Sheila in her own room first, before anybody else, while she is asleep or half-awake, then in the following hours move her and stage her body and conceal the forensic evidence in her room? If Jeremy didn't do it this way, then how did Jeremy position her for the shot?
June couldn't sleep through it.
One possibility I've noticed that guilters sometimes raise is that Nevill was elsewhere at the time Jeremy began the assault - usually it's either downstairs and he interrupts Jeremy on or soon after entry, or he's in the upstairs office. Neither works in my opinion, simply because of how he is dressed when found. An additional problem with having him already downstairs is that you then have to explain the cartridge cases found in a completely different part of the house, which can only work if Jeremy pursues him upstairs, but again, why is he barefoot and in pyjamas? If he is going to confront a potential intruder (as opposed to Sheila having a tantrum) then he'd have footwear at the least. And how does he then end up back downstairs, if Jeremy is pursuing him with a fully-loaded rifle? Remember also that, unlike Sheila, Jeremy would not run ahead of him up the stairs to get at June or the twins, instead Jeremy would deal with him first - surely.
I'm left with something I can't fully explain, and with an interesting dichotomy. Worryingly, at least for me, the ballistics, blood evidence and the incident sequencing fits Sheila much more easily.
Thus, the 'big picture' points to Jeremy, yet the 'small picture' points to Sheila. At least, that's where I am with it at the moment.
I mentioned above the possibility that Nevill was already alert as Jeremy enters the room, but there are problems with that, some of which have been touched on in this thread and elsewhere. Some in the guilt camp have even proposed that Nevill was moved downstairs by Jeremy. Did he coerce him downstairs or did he carry his body? There are serious problems with either. If the latter, how do you explain all the blood in the kitchen? What about the scratch marks in the paint? How do they get there?
There was clearly no blood on Nevill's side of the bed. You can see it clearly in the photographs of the main bedroom. It is true that Essex Police destroyed bedding and what not, and this is a point often raised by the innocent camp, and I agree this was not wise on the part of the police, but the criticism is not entirely fair: the police did take samples before earmarking things for destruction, and if Nevill's blood had been there, it would have been detected. In fact, only June and Sheila's blood was found.
Nevill's blood should have been in the master bedroom but it seems it wasn't. You can't circumvent this by pretending that the police somehow missed it. They simply wouldn't have missed it. You also can't circumvent this by pretending that the blood would only be on his clothes when he was in bed. How did the blood not get on the bed clothes? Was he shot when standing up? Then how did he get past Jeremy? Why not tackle Jeremy there and then for the gun? And if he wasn't shot in bed, then why did Jeremy shoot June first?
The teddy bear - if this belonged to Nevill or June, I think Jeremy would have cleared that up. To my knowledge, he has never mentioned it. Probably somebody should ask him. For now, I appreciate we don't know why the teddy was there, but since there are young children in the house, it wouldn't be odd to find that it had been left there by the twins. I think it would be rather odd for grown adults to have a teddy bear. I have never known it and June doesn't sound the type for that. But Sheila might have wanted the teddy bear there and even put it in the middle of the bed purposefully, or it may have been playfully left there by the twins after a reading session.
Did Jeremy move Nevill's body?
Let's think about this:
My own view is that Jeremy would not have taken the rifle back downstairs at all. He had no reason to, and he was also unlikely to, because remember that in order to figure out how to stage Sheila's suicide, he had to take the silencer off the rifle and then place the rifle on Sheila's body. He would have just left the rifle on or by the body and put the silencer in the gun cupboard before leaving.
However, we can't rule out completely the idea that after placing the rifle on Sheila's body, he decided that he needed to check on Nevill by prodding him with the rifle, so returned downstairs with the rifle having the intention of putting it back on Sheila's body later. So let's assume that Jeremy returns the silencer to the gun cupboard, and in doing so, he also checks Nevill's body with the rifle.
The immediate problem Jeremy would have is that Nevill's body blocks the way to the den. How does he get to the gun cupboard if he can't get through the back door of the kitchen into the back corridor?
It must be that Jeremy moved the body either before or after leaving the silencer in the gun cupboard (and if before, that means he's moved it twice). But why would Jeremy block the back door of the kitchen with Nevill's body? One possibility is that Nevill was still alive and after killing Sheila, Jeremy heard Nevill downstairs or even when he was in Nevill's den, and that is when the struggle between them ensued in which Jeremy hits a dying Nevill with the rifle butt, etc.
The next problem is how Jeremy can go through the back corridor and across the floor of the den without leaving blood traces and blood prints (feet, hands, fingers) on the floor and walls and in the gun cupboard itself. He is carrying a silencer that has blood in it and he must have blood on his shoes/boots and clothing as he has presumably struggled with Nevill. This I can't explain. Did Jeremy remove all his clothing and tip-toe across?
If we start from the hypothetical that Jeremy did this, then this is how I begin to reason it out:
(i). First, it is very unlikely that Jeremy planned for Nevill to be found in the kitchen. This leaves open two possibilities:
(a). either Nevill escaped downstairs; or,
(b). Nevill confronted Jeremy in the kitchen.
We can rule out (b) because the Crown have ruled it out on their own evidence. That leaves us with (a).
(ii). If Nevill escaped downstairs, then you have to explain the lack of blood. There are other problems with this explanation, which I've gone through in some detail in other posts. The noise is an issue. The shooting order is a problem. Nevill's motivation is an issue: why run from his family? Why go downstairs at all? Maybe it was an instinctive response and he was trying to draw Jeremy's fire, but there's a problem with the time-and-motion aspect and the ammunition count and firing order that myself and Adam discussed. Adam ended up proposing that Jeremy must have run out of ammunition, but if so, why would Nevill run? Why not struggle with Jeremy? Why does Jeremy have no facial marks? Was he wearing a mask?
I can't remember exactly what I said about it all, but I think I concluded that whoever did this could have shot Nevill while he was ascending the stairs rather than descending, the killer then following him back to the kitchen. But if that's the case, surely the killer was Sheila?
If Jeremy shot Nevill while they are both descending the stairs, then why isn't there more blood on the stairs and why didn't Jeremy simply catch up with Nevill before they reached the kitchen? I think Stan Jones recorded in his notebook the presence of blood spots on the stairs, but they can't have been very noticeable as nobody else found them and it seems convenient that Stan Jones would and nobody else.
If Nevill makes it to the kitchen, then why doesn't he make it to the phone or the back kitchen door and then his den where there are guns? Why didn't he barricade himself in the kitchen itself or even in the den?
(ii). Regardless of what you conclude about the above, if we continue with the assumption it was Jeremy, then the next question is whether there was a pressing need for the presence of Nevill's body in the kitchen (however it got there) to be explained.
Jeremy may have decided to leave the phone off the hook for this reason, but if Jeremy did the killings, then why didn't he smear blood on the phone? He surely must have thought about that? Thus, why stage a call? What purpose does that serve?
Also why isn't there blood on the kitchen door, or the back kitchen door, or in the back corridor, or Nevill's den, or the gun cupboard?
I could probably write a much better post about this by re-marshalling all the facts and my notes. The above is just what occurs to me off-hand. My overall conclusion when I looked into this in some depth before was that the whole thing doesn't hang together. There isn't blood where there should be and Sheila makes more sense as the killer given all the hard evidence. For instance, Nevill would not need to struggle with Jeremy: one or other of them would prevail quickly. Sheila, on the other hand, could have been in a messy struggle with her father. Clearly her father was stronger, but he may have been injured and weakened and also reluctant to harm Sheila, giving Sheila a crucial advantage (which women sometimes have in those situations). Taking a loaded rifle off a shorter and weaker person is also not as simple as you may think. First he has to catch her. Chairs could be turned-over and lights damaged in the process.
That doesn't mean I think Sheila did it, but there you are. It could have been Jeremy. Ultimately, Nevill may have ended up in the kitchen and Jeremy may have made a miscalculation.
If we're saying he's guilty, then we have to explain how she has got to the master bedroom and found a dying June without getting any blood or dirt on her hands and feet. One explanation is, as you say, Sheila never woke, but remember that the pharmacological/psychiatric evidence for this is ropey, and we also have to take into account what the pathologist says about the way Sheila was shot. This is why I'm quite keen on my theory that Jeremy shot Sheila first before the others and he did this in the second bedroom, perhaps as she sat up in bed.
On the other hand, I'm sceptical about the idea that Jeremy planned all this out. I think Jeremy in a psychotic rage is more likely, giving life to a kernel of ideas that have been floating around in his head for a while. The rage is perhaps catalysed by a genuine phone call from Nevill that evening in which Nevill berates Jeremy, which in turn plants the seed in Jeremy's head for faking a call to establish an alibi.
This would help explain why Jeremy injured Nevill in the way that he does. I think there may also be some sadistic element to the killing of June.
Sheila is a problem in all this because if you have her alert and you can't explain what she is doing while Nevill and Jeremy are downstairs, then there is reasonable doubt.
I think the police and the DPP realised this themselves and that's why in the Ainsley report to the DPP, it sets out a theory that Jeremy shot Sheila once in the master bedroom before tackling Nevill downstairs. I think probably most people on this forum would discount that and I would too, simply because Jeremy would not risk allowing Nevill a head start downstairs.
I go back to my belief that Jeremy's actions were unplanned. Probably what really happened is that Jeremy formed a vague idea in his head of leaving a rifle on or by Sheila's body, maybe influenced by something he had seen in a film or on TV. He doesn't think through how he will control Sheila simply because he over-estimated the lethality of the rifle and also under-estimates the noise disturbance of the rifle within the farmhouse, having never practised with it indoors - another reason why I think the silencer wasn't used.
As a result, mayhem ensues and Jeremy is fortunate in that Sheila 'froze' or is disoriented out of tiredness. We have Jeremy downstairs, and having subdued and incapacitated Nevill, he realises he needs to go back upstairs quickly. There he finds Sheila, who is stood in the master bedroom looking at June and not sure what is going on, and he manages to kill her in the right way, but blunders and shoots her twice. The irony of it is that if Sheila had got June's blood on her, and even gone into the twins bedroom, Jeremy might have got away with it. The possibility, mooted by Lookout on the other thread, that June may have been shot on the main stairs, adds an additional layer of complication but may explain why Sheila didn't get June's blood on her and had clean hands and feet.
If we're saying Jeremy is guilty, then we have to explain how she has got to the master bedroom and found a dying June without getting any blood or dirt on her hands and feet. One explanation is, as you say, Sheila never woke, but remember that the pharmacological/psychiatric evidence for this is ropey, and we also have to take into account what the pathologist says about the way Sheila was shot. This is why I'm quite keen on my theory that Jeremy shot Sheila first before the others and he did this in the second bedroom, perhaps as she sat up in bed.
On the other hand, I'm sceptical about the idea that Jeremy planned all this out. I think Jeremy in a psychotic rage is more likely, giving life to a kernel of ideas that have been floating around in his head for a while. The rage is perhaps catalysed by a genuine phone call from Nevill that evening in which Nevill berates Jeremy, which in turn plants the seed in Jeremy's head for faking a call to establish an alibi.
This would help explain why Jeremy injured Nevill in the way that he does. I think there may also be some sadistic element to the killing of June.
Sheila is a problem in all this because if you have her alert and you can't explain what she is doing while Nevill and Jeremy are downstairs, then there is reasonable doubt.
I think the police and the DPP realised this themselves and that's why in the Ainsley report to the DPP, it sets out a theory that Jeremy shot Sheila once in the master bedroom before tackling Nevill downstairs. I think probably most people on this forum would discount that and I would too, simply because Jeremy would not risk allowing Nevill a head start downstairs.
I go back to my belief that Jeremy's actions were unplanned. Probably what really happened is that Jeremy formed a vague idea in his head of leaving a rifle on or by Sheila's body, maybe influenced by something he had seen in a film or on TV. He doesn't think through how he will control Sheila simply because he over-estimated the lethality of the rifle and also under-estimates the noise disturbance of the rifle within the farmhouse, having never practised with it indoors - another reason why I think the silencer wasn't used.
As a result, mayhem ensues and Jeremy is fortunate in that Sheila 'froze' or is disoriented out of tiredness. We have Jeremy downstairs, and having subdued and incapacitated Nevill, he realises he needs to go back upstairs quickly. There he finds Sheila, who is stood in the master bedroom looking at June and not sure what is going on, and he manages to kill her in the right way, but blunders and shoots her twice. The irony of it is that if Sheila had got June's blood on her, and even gone into the twins bedroom, Jeremy might have got away with it. The possibility, mooted by Lookout on the other thread, that June may have been shot on the main stairs, adds an additional layer of complication but may explain why Sheila didn't get June's blood on her and had clean hands and feet.
Not all doubt, even when significant, will develop into reasonable doubt because there may be explanations or resolutions that can override the benefit of the doubt that we are supposed to give to the accused.
However, in this case, we are left with a hole in the prosecution case - if we're saying Nevill was in the bedroom during the first fusilade.
Nevill can't have been in bed, because the blood evidence tells us he can't have been.
If we're saying Nevill was out of bed and stood up, why doesn't he just attack Jeremy? If he flees instead, how does he know Jeremy will follow him? If we're saying he attacks Jeremy, then why and how does he end up back in the kitchen?
On its face, the prosecution case does not add up in all sorts of ways, this being one of them.
My source is common sense and simple logic, which tell me that when somebody is shot while asleep with bed clothes over them, it is highly likely blood will end up on the bed clothes and highly unlikely that it won't, and if there is no blood on the bed clothes, that suggests the individual was not shot in bed.
Anybody who disagrees needs to answer this question:
Where exactly was Nevill when he was shot? Am I to assume that you accept that he could not have been fast asleep in bed, or in bed at all?
If you say he was standing up, are you also saying that Nevill fled the scene without tackling Jeremy?
If Nevill was shot in bed, I maintain there is a high probability that there would be blood on the bed clothes on Nevill's side of the bed. I rest on common sense and everyday cognisance for this argument.
Where was Nevill shot while he was in bed?
Possible way a Nevill upstairs scenario could work:
Nevill and June are in bed, asleep.
June hears something and wakes up Nevill.
Nevill goes to investigate and stands on the threshold or main landing.
Jeremy enters the master bedroom from the box room (nearest to Nevill's side of the bed).
Jeremy shoots June, maybe three times.
Jeremy then pursues Nevill downstairs, shooting him at least four times.